Keyboards are widely used to input text, numbers, cursor controls and/or other data to a wide variety of different devices. Many personal computer systems, for example, use conventional “QWERTY”, Dvorak or other keyboards to provide text entry, cursor control and/or any number of other inputs. Many other devices, including mobile telephones, smart phones, personal digital assistants, wireless communications devices, video game players and the like also include numeric or alphanumeric keyboards for entering phone numbers, text messages and other forms of input. Still other products use keyboards to provide different types of data entry. Conventional remote controls, for example, commonly incorporate keyboards that receive user inputs for adjusting the settings of controlled components such as televisions, media players, set-top boxes (including satellite and/or cable television receivers), audio/video components, climate controls and many other products. Many other types of keyboards are used to provide inputs to many additional types of devices as well.
Some keyboards are now lighted to provide an improved user experience. Lighted keyboards can be used to improve key visibility to the user, to emphasize certain keys while de-emphasizing others, or for any other purpose. Illuminated keyboards can be complicated, however, by the need to individually connect and manage lights for each of the keys as well as the need to detect keypresses of each of the various keys. This relatively large number of signal paths can consume a large number of input/output pins on a digital controller, and can be mechanically complex to manufacture. Although multiplexing or other decoding logic could be used to reduce some of the wiring, this would add complexity and cost to the design.
It is therefore desirable to create systems, devices and/or methods to efficiently yet effectively provide an illuminated keyboard. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.